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Plath v. Moore, 4th Cir. (1997)
Plath v. Moore, 4th Cir. (1997)
Plath v. Moore, 4th Cir. (1997)
her to work, but they refused and drove off . . . They then
went back, picked Gardner up, and took her to a remote
wooded area near a garbage dump.2
There, Plath, Arnold and their girlfriends subjected Gardner to acts of
extreme cruelty and perversion.
According to testimony at trial, shortly after arriving at the wooded
area, Arnold knocked Gardner to the ground and he and Plath began
kicking her. Plath then ordered Gardner to undress, and forced her to
perform oral sex upon himself and Cindy Sheets ("Sheets"). While
Gardner performed oral sex upon Sheets, Plath beat Gardner with a
leather belt, and subsequently urinated in Gardner's mouth, forcing
her to swallow the urine.
Plath and Arnold then together attempted to strangle Gardner with
a piece of garden hose they found on the dump site. When this
method of execution proved unsatisfactory, Plath repeatedly stomped
on Gardner's neck, commenting that "niggers are sure hard to kill."
Afterwards, Plath stabbed Gardner some ten times in the chest, and
Arnold, using the garden hose, dragged Gardner by the neck into the
adjacent woods. Arnold returned to say Gardner did not seem to be
dead, and as a result Plath told Sheets to take a broken bottle and cut
Gardner's throat.
Sheets and Arnold finally strangled Gardner with the hose, and, in
an effort to mislead police, Arnold carved "KKK" into Gardner's
body. Nearly six weeks later, however, Sheets led authorities to Gardner's badly decomposed body.
The South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed Plath's and Arnold's
convictions, but reversed the death sentences and remanded the case
for resentencing.3 After a resentencing trial before a jury, the Court
of General Sessions again imposed the death penalty on both defendants. Plath then appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court,
which affirmed the death sentence,4 and to the United States Supreme
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2 Id. at 1355.
3 State v. Plath, 284 S.E.2d 221 (S.C. 1981).
4 State v. Plath, 313 S.E.2d 619 (S.C. 1984).
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Court, which denied Certiorari.5 Plath subsequently applied for PostConviction Relief ("PCR") in the South Carolina Court of General
Sessions in November 1984, and amended that application twice in
1985. After an evidentiary hearing, the Court of General Sessions dismissed Plath's PCR application on May 12, 1986.
Following that dismissal, Plath again applied for, and was granted,
Certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, and that court remanded6
the case to the Court of General Sessions for reconsideration in light
of Yates v. Aiken.7 The issue meriting reconsideration was whether the
implied malice instruction given at Plath's original trial violated his
right to due process of law under the 14th Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution and, if so, whether that violation constituted reversible
error. The Court of General Sessions found that the implied malice
instruction did not violate Yates v. Aiken, and that, even if it did, that
violation was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Thereafter, Plath submitted a third amended PCR application,
which was denied on March 5, 1990. Plath appealed this denial to the
South Carolina Supreme Court, which affirmed,8 holding that,
although the implied malice instruction violated Yates v. Aiken, it was
harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under the analysis set forth in
Yates v. Evatt.9 On February 22, 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court denied
Certiorari.10
Plath then sought habeas relief in the United States District Court
for the District of South Carolina. On October 8, 1993, the State made
a motion for summary judgement, and on October 17, 1994, a U.S.
Magistrate issued a report recommending denial of habeas corpus
relief. The district court granted the State's motion for summary
judgement and denied habeas relief on September 3, 1996, and denied
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5 Plath v. South Carolina, 467 U.S. 1265 (1984).
6 Plath v. South Carolina, 484 U.S. 1022 (1988).
7 484 U.S. 211 (1988).
8 Arnold v. State, 420 S.E.2d 834 (1992).
9 500 U.S. 391 (1991).
10 Plath v. State, 507 U.S. 927 (1993).
4
Mere competency and reasonableness are all that is required of counsel under this analysis,38 and such is clearly present in the strategic
decision to use the orthopedic surgeon's testimony in lieu of what
appears from the record to have been an impractical alternative.
Moreover, Plath, through medical witnesses, was able to establish that
his leg had been broken six weeks before the crime. The failure to
admit additional x-ray evidence to establish the same fact hardly prejudiced Plath. For these reasons, we hold that the actions of Plath's
counsel in this regard were adequate.
Third, Plath claims that his attorneys' failure to present additional
mitigating evidence deprived him of his right to effective assistance
of counsel. Specifically, Plath claims that, had a more extensive
investigation into his background and mental state been made, such
mitigating evidence would have influenced a jury to impose a sentence of life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. And indeed,
Plath's brief paints a striking picture of Plath's tragic background and
extremely unstable mental state.
However, as the State's brief points out, several factors militate
against Plath's success on this ground. First, Plath did not raise this
issue until his final motion to amend his application for PCR,39 which
means that, absent a showing of cause and prejudice or a fundamental
miscarriage of justice, it cannot be considered in this habeas proceeding. Additionally, it appears from the record that, although Plath's
counsel did not make an exhaustive examination of his background
and mental state, they nevertheless made a reasonable one.40 At least
ten witnesses testified as to Plath's background, and, as the State's
brief makes clear, sufficient consideration of Plath's mental state was
made.
Further, when considered against the sheer magnitude of the aggravating evidence against Plath, it is difficult to see the allegedly unreasonable omission of this mitigating evidence as prejudicial. As in
Strickland, "[g]iven the overwhelming aggravating factors, there is no
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38 See Kornahrens, 66 F.3d at 1361.
39 J.A. at 2373.
40 See Matthews, 105 F.3d 907, 919-20 (4th Cir. 1997).
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